Does triple-deep cellar racking make sense?

I was curious as to whether anyone has ever seen triple-deep cellar racking. Would this just be a giant p.i.t.a., or is there a space-saving benefit to this racking system? Thanks!

Pita - hard to get your arm in that far.

I say no. That’s because I asked for it at my offsite storage and now regret it.

It’s hard to reach that far with your arm and they offer a wire to snake around it but that doesn’t work for bottles with a wider base. It also makes things hard to find.

If you’re laying the bottles down and they’re pointing at you, it’s a PITA. I have long arms and it’s still a pain, plus it’s hard to see what’s back there. If you’re standing the bottles upright, then you can go ten deep and it’s still OK.

I have a locker that’s four deep (all in cases) and it’s a pain. It would be slightly easier in a stand-up room, but you put your back at risk lifting boxes every time you need to dig something out.

I have triple deep in my offsite in cardboard tubes. I find it ok; it’s not too bad - yes, you gotta stretch deep to get the neck of the last bottle and pull it out, but it definitely puts more bottles in a smaller space. I don’t mind it much.

I think it all depends how high the racking is. On my tubes that are low to the ground, it’s tough to angle yourself without lying down on the floor to go double deep.

Sure, if you’ve got a 30" effective reach, but still terrible in terms of how many bottles you have to move to get to the ones at the back.

Mine are currently double deep. That causes enough problems to find a wine burried unless you hang a label on the outside bottle. I would not go 3 deep.

My little alligator arms have a hard time with two deep, let alone three. If you are talking about 3 deep with the bottles sideways, as opposed to end-to-end, then that is a different story. I have these and will never go back to wooden racks.

http://www.wineracksamerica.com/vintage-view/ws3/ws33.php?gclid=CNHs4Mu80cgCFVcRHwod7xYJXw

Mark - You could always get rolling shelves, like libraries use. Chelsea Wine Storage here uses those. In effect, you move the shelves to create an aisle where you need it. It’s very efficient in terms of space, but no doubt expensive.

True. . . I didn’t think about that. Mine is normal body height, but I do have to get a small ladder (3-4 steps) to get to the very top. Laying on the ground to reach those bottles does sound like a pain in the ass now that you’ve brought it up. . . hah.

PITA

Def. a pita, especially if you get wood racks. splinters are inevitable. i got one under my nail one time and have cursed 3 deep since that day. it’s better stored in your liver anyway

I have a lot of double deep racking, 18 rows high. Already enough of a PITA reaching to the back for the top and bottom few rows.

Also, because tracking exact row/column/back-front is also a major PITA, I only track location by 12 bottle bins (3 per column) so a little bit of looking around can be required at times. 3 deep would be horrible in that situation.

But would it save space? Yeah, i’m sure it would.

I have double deep racking and that’s OK, but I’m six feet tall with long arms. I still have to get on a stool to get the rear bottles at the top, and triple deep would be a major PITA, generating dislocated shoulders.

I use 12 deep circular racks and just take a bottle out of one end and shove it into the other end and keep doing that until the bottle I want appears.

I have 3 deep tubes in a couple of wine lockers at a local wine storage facility. The facility has long handled ‘grabbers’ for getting wine in the back of the tubes. Using this is no problem at all…so I would go 3 deep in a second. Not having the grabber would be a pain tho…if you want, I can ask the wine facility owner where he got them (I’m guessing ULine) and how much they are (can’t imagine they’re very much).

Also, I’d use cardboard tubes, not wooden racking. The tubes are much more flexible…there are different size tubes that fit bordeaux bottles, std burgundy bottles, fat 750 bottles, and even magnums. That way you can maximize your storage based, and have different sized tubes in your space to fit your bottles. The lockers I use are ~3ft wide by ~3ft high. Tubes work well for this…don’t think I’d go higher than that tho.

Use some sort of bottle tracking/organization system…your life will be much easier, but that’s true for most wine storage methods once you have more than a few dozen cases of wine.

They do have them at ULine:

Just put the ‘picker’ in the tube, pull the trigger, it grabs/clamps the neck of the bottle and pull it out.

I LOL’d at the guy in the jumpsuit picking up trash. Seems like a great solution for those hard-to-reach bottles.